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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Haazinu 32:3 and the Nusach of Kedusha. כי שם ה' אקרא

The minhag of Ashkenaz is to begin Kedusha most of the time with the word נקדש, while minhag Sfard is to say נקדישך. Since I mentioned a teshuva from the Rogatchover the other day, I want to point out something else that he says. In the Tzofnas Pa'anei'ach on this week's parsha, Haazinu, he says that it depends on the Tosefta in Brachos 1:11 and the Sifri in Haazinu. It can be found here. It was taken from here, with only trivial differences. Good luck. With some (a lot) siyata dishmaya, I will, bl'n, try to put down an intelligible precis here before Shabbos. If anyone wants to volunteer, you are more than welcome.

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I just realized how funny the idea of writing a precis of the Rogatchover's remarks is. When we finish that, we're going to write an concise overview of Reb Meshulam Igra's top ten maarachos.

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Here's the way I understand it. In a nutshell: He says that "נקדש... כשם שמקדישים means that we are just quoting the Malachim, but we ourselves are not saying their Kedusha. נקדישך...כסוד שרפי קודש, on the other hand, means that we ourselves are saying the Kedusha of the Malachim. During the week, our kedusha is limited to the one sentence of ימלוך. On Shabbos, we incorporate the Kedusha of the Malachim into our Kedusha by using the words they use.

Now to explain it as well as I can: I'll start with the essential Marei Mekomos.

The Tosefta says that Rav Yehuda said Kadosh and Baruch with the Shli'ach Tzibur. The Rogatchover learned that to mean that the Rabanan argue with Rav Yehuda; the Rabbanan didn't say either Kadosh or Baruch; all they said was Yimloch, which is the kedusha that is specific to Klal Yisrael. Rav Yehuda, on the other hand, holds that the tzibbur does say the entire kedusha. The basis of the machlokes is this: when you quote someone else's words, does it have the legal effect of your having said the words yourself. For example, if you were a witness to someone's blasphemy, and you testify against him in Beis Din, and you repeat his words verbatim, are you guilty of blasphemy? This, he says, is a machlokes between our girsa in the Gemara in Sanhedrin 56 and 60, which says that nobody is allowed to quote the blasphemer verbatim, against the Rambam in 2 Avoda Zara 8, who says אזהרה של מגדף מנין שנאמר אלהים לא תקלל. בכל יום ויום בודקין את העדים בכינוים יכה יוסי את יוסי. נגמר הדין מוציאין את כל אדם לחוץ ושואלים את הגדול שבעדים ואומרים לו אמור מה ששמעת בפירוש והוא אומר והדיינים עומדים על רגליהם וקורעין ולא מאחין.

Relevant to Kedusha, the Rabanan hold that what we say from the malachim is just a סיפור דברים בעלמא and doesn't carry to weight of a real kedusha, and that's why we say
נקדש... כשם שמקדישים the whole week. Only on Shabbos does our kedusha acquire the significance of a real kedusha (and this is why we insert Shma- because Shma is our specific Kedusha-) and that is why we change the nusach to
נקדישך...כסוד שרפי קודש , which means we're doing the kedusha ourselves, not merely quoting the Malachim.

(This, by the way (not from the Rogatchover), is the reason that we use the נקדישך language for all the tefillos of Yom Kippur. The special status that is usually reserved for Shabbos, when we say Shma, which is our specific Kedusha, also applies to the entire day of Yom Kippur.)

This is reflected in the Tosfos in Sanhedrin, which said from the Teshuvas Hageonim that in Eretz Yisrael, they only said Kedusha on Shabbos. This means that the Shliach Tzibur's kedusha the whole week was just סיפור דברים בעלמא. Only on Shabbos is it really the kind of Kedusha that the Malachim say the whole week. We also see it in the Sifri in Haazinu- that only after twenty one words could Moshe say Kedusha. We, too, only say our own kedusha after six days of repeating the words of the Malachim and then doing it once ourselves- a total of twenty one repetitions of the word קדוש before we use Hashem's name in our own Kedusha.Eli sent us a mareh makom to the Orchos Chaim (not the Rosh: he was a talmid of the Rosh and his Sefer was the predecessor to the Kolbo) here, an amazing tzushtell to the Rogatchover, exactly on point and using the Tosfos in Sanhedrin:

I found that the Medrash brought down in Tosfos is also mentioned in the אור זרוע. The Ohr Zarua here (at the end of the first column, in Hilchos Motzei Shabbos) applies the Medrash to the Tzidkascha that we say at Mincha on Shabbos, not to Kedusha like Tosfos. Please note the the Or Zarua was an early contemporary of the Baalei HaTosfos- he didn't get the Medrash from them.

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Here's another interesting idea based on the Tosfos in Sanhedrin, from Rav Hirshprung of Montreal, a famous illui who knew Shas like I know Ashrei. He notes that the Shaarei Teshuva in 268 brings from the Mor U'Ketzi'ah that although Maariv is a "Reshus," that's not true on Friday night. (For a more thorough treatment, see Pnei Meivin #43, here.) He says this also appears in the Zohar and the Tikkunim, I think here. Why should this be true?

The Gemara in Chagiga 12b says that the Malachim sing at night but are silent during the day in honor of the tefilla of Klal Yisrael. The Mahrsha there explains that our main tefillos are those of the daytime, which are obligatory. Since Maariv is voluntary, our saying maariv doesn't preclude the Malachim from saying their own shira.

Rav Hirshprung points out that:Rav Hirshprung points out
that:a. theTeshuvas HaGeonim inTosfos in Sanhedrin shows that the shira of the Malachim does not take
place on Shabbos. b. The Teshuvas HaGeonim says that Klal Yisrael has a shira on Shabbos that
takes the place of what the Malachim do during weekdays, c. According to the Gemara in Chagiga and the
Mahrsha, a whole week the Malachim are silent during the day in deference to
Klal Yisrael and their Shira is only at night, d. therefore, the only change that occurs on Shabbos must be at night-
Maariv. e. Since, as the Mahrsha says, the Malachim are silent only during our
tefillos chova, then f. the change in our Maariv must be from Reshus to Chova.QED, Maariv is a reshus on weekdays but a chova on Shabbos.

(Please note an irony that arises from saying that Maariv is a Reshus during the week and a Chova on Shabbos: Tosfos in Brachos 4b and 27b says בסדר רב עמרם פי' מה שאנו אומרים קדיש בין גאולה לתפלת ערבית לאשמעינן דלא בעינן מסמך גאולה דערבית לתפלה משום דתפלת ערבית רשות. Combining the shitah of Rav Amram Gaon with the Zohar, the result would be that davka on Shabbos, you have to be masmich geula to tefilla during maariv, because on Shabbos it's a chova, so Shabbos would be more chamur in the smichas geula le'tefila department. Which is kind of ironic, because on the other hand, you have the opinion (brought in the Mishna Berura 111 SK 9) that you don't have to be masmich geula to tefilla on Shabbos at all, not even at Shachris, because it doesn't have a din of eis tzara, and Shabbos is more kal in the din of smicha.

And finally, to bring everything together, let me tell you how I feel after going through these two Rogatchovers. When I was in Ner Israel, I heard that Rav Hirshprung said that he knows the entire Reb Chaim al HaRambam by heart, milah b'milah, and he doesn't understand one paragraph. Like Rav Hirshprung felt about Reb Chaim, I feel about the Rogatchover. I have a pretty good head for lomdus and analysis of Gemara; at least I understand it if someone explains it to me. I should, after all, considering all the time I've spent in and around Yeshiva limudim. But reading the Rogatchover is like Gemara refracted, like reading in a different language. He points to things and says "See?" and I look and look and have no idea of how he sees anything of the sort there.

9 comments:

Some comments: (a) I am not sure there is any grammatical difference between נקדש את שמך and נקדישך. Both mean WE will sanctify. כתר could be different, see below. (b) Tosefta could be talking about Kedusha of Yotzer, thus no Yimloch. Maybe that's why the term "המברך" is used, and not "שליח ציבור". (c) Now that the Cairo Geniza was studied, Nusach EY is actually known. They did not say Kedusha at all except for special days, even then only on Shachris (not even Mussaf), and YK also in Mussaf, Mincha and Neila. (d) On a positive note, the idea that נקדש is סיפור דברים as opposed to the Mussaf Kedusha goes back to the Rishonim, e.g. Re'ah in Orchos Chayim (but he refers to Keter, and claims עם עמך ישראל means Yisroel are עיקר. Birkey Yosef relates this to Mechlokes RT with R. Elchanan on עם דרך ארץ). See http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=40307&st=&pgnum=155&hilite=

I followed his "ובאמת זה שינוי הנוסח של אשכנזים והספרדים אם נקדישך או נקדש", but you might be correct. I don't know what's the difference between כשם and כסוד either, but there might be one.

Regarding bney EY, I now realized they used the 'standard' opening of Kedusha only on 'regular' Shabbos - on special occasions such as Arba Parshios, Zain deNechemta etc, and of course on YT, there was typically a Kedushta (such as the piyyut (we skip) in our Machzor, going all through the first three brachot; in our Machzor the end of the piyyut is usually followed by the standard introductory phrase, e.g. אז בקול רעש but this is a late addition). Some of the Kedushtaot show a more complex picture. Just one example, from YK Shcachris, where on one hand we have "שנאנים ישבחוך תרשישים יתמידוך קדושה משולשת ככתוב ע"י נביאך וכו'" and then in the next passage "לכן כל אשר באפיו נשמת רוח... יסלדו וסלסלו לאל בורא רוח, כחיה ואופן יבוא בם רוח, לעמתם ברוך יאמרו וכו'" -- so the two concepts of Kedusha were used interchangeably. I checked a few more, and they also have one of the psukim introduced as a quote of Malachim and the other as our own.

Nusach EY was, by an large, lost, as the Babylonians won their war against EY yeshiva. Interestingly, some of its reminiscents survived (in Ashkenaz) in Yom-Tov and especially RH and YK, where we say עושה השלום, לעלא ולעלא, קדוש אתה ונורא שמך, שאותך לבדך ביראה נעבוד etc. -- all of these are all-year-around nuschaot of EY.

RChQ, so you noticed that Eli is not just another local lamden? I don't know if he'll answer, but unless you were expecting a highly regarded researcher and professor of theoretical physics- among other things- you might be surprised.

The Reb Chaim that was the son of the Beis Halevi and great-grandson of Reb Chaim Volozhener and father of the Gri'z. His point was that Reb Chaim's lomdus methodology was so foreign to his way of thinking as to be incomprehensible. And he didn't say he didn't understand a word. He said he didn't understand one full paragraph. I think that might have been a hyperbole, because sometimes the introductory paragraphs are pretty straightforward. He must have been referring to the paragraphs that express Reb Chaim's particular style of thinking and analysis.